Apple celebrates the App Store’s fifth birthday by giving stuff away

Video: Ars shares a few scenes from our favorites of the newly free games.

On July 10, 2008, Apple introduced the first official iPhone app store alongside the then-new iPhone 3G and iPhone OS 2.0. Third-party apps were crucial to transforming the device from a shiny, pretty phone and e-mail machine into the multifaceted mini-computer that we carry around today. To celebrate the store's fifth birthday, Apple is giving away a handful of high-profile apps for our favorite price: $0.

Traktor DJ for iPhone and iPad, an app for creating your own thumping club mixes (normally $4.99 and $19.99)

Apple hasn't announced an end date to the promotion, so it would be best to get while the getting is good. If you don't want to click the individual links above, you can find all of the apps listed in the App store here. And if you want our advice, check out the video below for some gameplay from our favorite titles being offered.

The four free games to get during the App Store's anniversary promo.

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites

Some neat stuff here. As mentioned, if you click download, it will "purchase" the apps (for free), and you'll be able to re-download them at any later date onto whatever device(s) you choose.

It might also be a good idea to download them onto your computer, so that if for some weird reason they get pulled from the app store in the future, you can still transfer them over directly from iTunes.

HIGHLY Recommend Traktor DJ for iPad. $20 well spent and now it's free?! I'm downloading the iPhone version now but I can't expect it to be nearly as good simply because of the lack of screen real estate on any iPhone.

Does the Apple store normally have free apps, or are the 0.99USD the cheapest ones?

Yes, there are plenty of free apps. Although, as you might expect, many of the always-free ones are ad-supported. A smaller percentage of free apps are completely free (benevolent developers), and a final category of free apps are ones that are being given away or put on sale as part of a larger promotion undoubtedly designed to encourage us to spend more money (like this one).

Does the Apple store normally have free apps, or are the 0.99USD the cheapest ones?

There's a lot of everything, really. Fully-functional free apps, fremium apps (apps that are free to "purchase," but have extras you can buy within the app, particularly games), and apps that cost money—with or without additional in-app purchases. I would suspect it's the same in all "app" stores, since revenue models tend to cut across specific platforms.

Does the Apple store normally have free apps, or are the 0.99USD the cheapest ones?

Oh, I should mention a recent favorite "free but not free, but still pretty good" free app of mine: The Walking Dead. It gives you the first episode for free, but you have to buy the rest. Ends up being something like $20. Not really cheap at all, but the original taste is free. That's another example of free app I forgot to mention: free to get the first bite, but much of it being locked behind DLC paywalls.

Does the Apple store normally have free apps, or are the 0.99USD the cheapest ones?

Not to push another site, but I normally visit IGN for their App Store Update. They typically release it every weekday, and it includes new releases, sales and freebies. Given it's on IGN, it is mostly games that are listed, but it's a nice resource. There are also apps that present sales to you, and I've found some good apps ( that aren't games ) through those.